Frances Shea, who took her own life aged 24, also wrote of the abuse and bouts of drunken temper she endured at the hands of the East End gangster

The tragic young wife of Reggie Kray wrote a diary describing how the “always drunk” gangster kept an arsenal of weapons by his bedside.

Frances Shea wrote of the abuse and bouts of drunken temper she endured at the hands of the East End villain shortly before taking her own life when aged 24.

She wrote: “(He) came back night time. By the side of bed gun, sword, knife, chopper, flick-knife.

“He used to sleep with flick-knife under his pillow.”

He later took to keeping a loaded rifle by his bed after making sure every door and window of their home was locked, the journal reveals.

The diary records how Reggie often told Frances "shut your mouth" and that he would "make her suffer" and torment her by suggesting he was having affairs with club hostesses.

Frances also wrote of how much time the notorious gangster spent at his mother’s house, where his hard man twin brother Ronnie walked around in his underwear.

Desperate Frances kept the log while she sought a way out of her unhappy marriage with bisexual Reggie, whom she wed in 1965 aged 22 having dated him since she was 16.

She had moved in with her parents and took an overdose just three months after her wedding - and had sought an annulment on the grounds that it had not been consummated.

She died in 1967 and an inquest ruled that she committed suicide by taking a fatal drug overdose, though later there were claims she was actually murdered by Ronnie.

Frances’ five-page diary, along with over 60 letters Reggie wrote to her while he was in prison before they were married, are now being sold by a direct descendant of her family.

The letters show a clear Jekyll and Hyde side to Reggie’s personality, as he comes across as loving and affectionate in some and bitter and spiteful in others.

In one letter he wrote in August 1960, the mobster calls his then girlfriend a "spiteful little tormentor" after she had told him she had been out dancing and how she was "humiliating" him in front of other inmates.